


Queen of Peace

by Sassaphrass



Series: Different People, Different Worlds [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Major character death - Freeform, Motherhood, Padmé Amidala Lives, Padmé POV, The Rebel Alliance, The Tragedy of Padmé Amidala, hard choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12503788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: Padmé Amidala lives. Democracy is dead, The Jedi are Dead, and her beloved husband Anakin Skywalker is dead.But, Padmé is still alive. Her children are still alive. And maybe, just maybe, there is still hope. So, she'll just have to keep going, and pray that someday all these terrible sacrifices will have been worth it.





	1. Twenty-Seven and the World Ended

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the idea that if Padmé had lived, she wouldn't have compromised, and she would have done whatever it took to make sure those kids were as safe as anyone could make them.

Padmé Naberrie is twenty-seven and she doesn't know if she has the will to go on.

 

Despite her privilege and her beauty, she has tasted despair before, but it the past it had had the knife-bright urgency of pain. It had been something active, and sometimes seemed to have a life of it's own. It had driven her forwards, motivated her to fight, to scratch and claw and never let it win.

 

_She was fourteen and standing alone watching the transmission from the planet she has fled._

_She was twenty-four and so lonely sometimes that she could cry._

_She was twenty-six and she fears the war will never end._

_(That had been how she'd found herself wandering incognito on a Hutt controled world, throwing herself to her knees before the Gungan lord, declaring her love to Anakin before they entered the arena, rallying her political allies to lobby for a diplomatic solution)_

 

But, in these past days her despair has been soporific. It deadens her to everything but itself. Ever since the petition of the two-thousand had failed, she had felt herself sinking in quicksand. The more she fought, the more she doomed herself.

 

When Obi-Wan had come with his news of Anakin's fall that had been a pain so terrible it had sparked her to life once more. As she begged Anakin to run away she had felt even younger than her already inadequate twenty-seven years. When Obi-Wan had stepped out of her skiff and the world, whose foundations had already irreparably cracked when democracy died and the Jedi temple burned, ended.

 

_she was twenty-seven and she was choking, on her grief, her desperation, and the phantom feeling of her young husband's hands around her throat._

 

She sits on the edge of her cot, in an ugly paper gown and watches her children wriggle in their bassinets. They are very small, and bright red.

 

_She is twenty-seven, and her husband is dead, democracy is dead, the Jedi are dead, and she must now raised her children alone in a world bereft all she ever cared for._

 

She hadn't let the her medical droid tell her the sex of the child. She'd wanted to be surprised. She'd thought it would be a boy. Anakin had thought it would be a girl. Turned out they were both right. She wishes she had known, because she is not prepared for both.

 

 _Luke and Leia._ She had named them in her agony, right before she'd slipped into a coma and almost died.

 

 _There are things worth fighting for._ She tries to remind herself, and what she really means is _there are things worth_ _ **living**_ _for._ Her babies are small, and helpless as only infants can be. They'll need their mother. 

 _But they are not defenseless. They have better protectors than you could ever be._ She reminds herself. _Obi-Wan is outside the door, and the Grand Master of the Jedi is down the hall._ But a darker, bitter voice hisses _**they couldn't save anakin, so how great can they be?**_

 _ **Neither could you**_ an even darker one hisses in reply.

 

She is not sure if it is a hard truth or a comforting one to know that her children do not really need her. They are, after all, the children of the Jedi, too, and the Jedi have never had much use for common things like mother or families.

 

 

One of her babies starts to cry, and she doesn't know whether it is Luke or Leia, only that it's lungs are healthy and it is screaming fit to shake the walls, while it's sibling looks at it in unfocused alarm.

 

She shouldn't call her child 'it', she should check which one it is, make a note of the blanket pattern and call them by their names.

 

Her baby is still screaming. She lowers her bare feet to the cold floor. She doesn't think she has the strength to pick them up, either of them. She hasn't held them yet, either of them.

 

Luke had been first, then Leia. She had wanted them so badly, loved them so fiercely before she'd ever met them, and now she can't bring herself to pick them up.

 

She stands over their bassinets and tentatively reaches down to shush her crying child.

 

“It's alright.” she whispers. “I'm here.” She runs a finger along their scalp, and feels the soft down of their hair. They are tiny babies, even for infants, but they are early, and they are twins, and besides, size counts for very little in the long run, just look at her. 

_Just look at her husband who had always stood so tall, and who had proven himself so_ _**weak.** _

 

The thought, and it's venomous certainty, surprises her. It echoes what she has heard when Obi-Wan spoke of the Dark Side and the Sith. The sheer contempt he had always shown for those swayed by such meager rewards.

 

She screws her eyes shut to keep from crying. _**That's not true. Even now, after everything, she cannot be so unfair to Anakin. He wasn't weak, he was afraid and forced to bear burdens too heavy for even the strongest sentient being.**_

 

It didn't matter now, she supposes. Anakin had been swayed. Anakin had fallen, and now Anakin was gone. Dead, and gone.

 

She misses him. He had gone mad, slaughtered his people, and nearly killed her, but she aches for his presence, even as troubled as he had become over the course of the war. After all, she had always known who he was, and what he was capable of. Hadn't she listened with compassion when he had spoken of his slaughter in the Tusken camp?

She'd loved him anyway. She'd married him anyway.

So, here she is: missing him anyway.

 

One of her babies is still crying and she's just standing there, blankly staring at them. Doing...nothing.

 

This wasn't how it had been supposed to go. She had had plans. A room in her lake house picked out. Furniture ordered. Small clothing reserved.

 

She had harbored a secret hope that the birth of their child would prompt Anakin to leave the Jedi Order and give himself time to recover from this terrible, seemingly unwinnable war.

_But the war had been won, though everything that mattered was lost in the winning of it._

 

There is a sound by the door and she looks up to see Kenobi standing there.

 

She knows he had held her hand while she screamed for Anakin on the birthing table. That he counseled courage when her vision began to fail. But, she had been lost in her own private agony, and looking at him now, all she can see is how different he seems from the energetic young Master who has been her most trusted friend for so long.

 

She had doubted him, when he told her what Anakin had done, not enough to truly disbelieve- just enough to need to see for herself. She had loved Anakin too much not to see for herself. It had never been that she did not trust Obi-Wan.

 

She had always trusted Obi-Wan, even back when he had been the solemn sensible Padawan to a reckless unreliable Jedi.

 

Looking at him now, she's not sure if the figure in the doorway, with the grey already frosting the gold, is still Obi-Wan. 

 

It's not like when she'd seen Anakin on Mustafar, and he had spoken the words of a stranger in a voice that was somehow still his own. All the parts of him that she had always seen, always known, and loved him for anyways, somehow having taken him over, turning him into something that was a monster, but still unmistakably her beloved husband.

 

The figure in the doorway doesn't seem like a stranger, or a monster. He seems like a remnant. All the things that had made him Obi-Wan hollowed out and swept away, leaving something that was not even a ghost.

 

He glances at her babies, and then back up at her.

 

“Are you well, Padmé?” he asks calmly.

 

If she weren't looking right at him, she's not sure she would recognize the voice as Obi-Wan's. If he looks awful, he sounds worse, because he sounds hoarse like he's been crying or screaming, and she's never known her precise well-mannered friend to ever raise his voice. Despite the roughness of his voice he sounds calm and flat and serene, and that's wrong because while Obi-Wan had been those things in all the time that she had known him, he had also always been wry, and judgmental, and more often than not said even the simplest phrases as though he was making joke at your expense. He'd been like that even back when he had been a padawan, trailing after his Master with scowls and silences. In those days there had been a bite to his speech, as though the joke were not entirely intended kindly.

It's gone now, and she remembers that whatever she has lost, whatever grief she feels, he has lost more, and no doubt is in greater pain.

 

She lost her husband, and her dreams and the rancor's share of her hopes.

 

He lost everything he ever had, all his friends, his brother, his family, his way of life.

 

It is strange to think that they should find themselves here, together, like two survivors adrift in an escape pod, safe and protected, while everything else burns.  

 

 _That is needlessly dramatic,_ she imagines him saying _. You've never been prone to such outbursts. I'll chalk it up to my former padawan's bad influence._

 

It occurs to her that this may be one loss Obi-Wan cannot recover from. That she will never see that careful smile, or hear that lilting teasing voice again.

 

“It is only-” he says gently, and still so calmly “-that your daughter has been crying for quite some time.”

 

Padmé looks down at her babies. One red in the face from screaming. The other quiet, though looking increasingly annoyed at the racket his sister was making.

 

Gingerly she reaches down and picks up her screaming daughter, which prompts a look of shock and outrage from her son, who immediately begins shrieking.

 

Obi-Wan huffs and moves forward, scooping up Luke and cradling him with practiced ease.

 

Padmé in comparison feels clumsy and awkward, holding her daughter.

 

“Come along.” he tells her, herding her back towards the bed. Fussing over her- Sitting her down and arranging her, before carefully handing her her second child- Obi-Wan seems almost like his old self again. He perches uncomfortably next to her on the bed, and gazes inscrutably at the babies.

 

One baby in each arm, she feels herself fighting back tears again.

 

Obi-Wan does his best to be comforting, but he's never been very good at dealing with emotions, so he just sort of...pats her, awkwardly on one arm.

 

That, for whatever reason, makes her break down and sniffle, just a little bit.

 

“How-.” she asks trying to reclaim her dignity. “How did you know it was Leia who was crying?”

 

Obi-Wan glances away guiltily before he admits. “They feel different in the Force.”

 

That knocks the air out of her lungs. It explains why the Jedi have lingered here for so long despite the danger.

 

Her arms tighten around the infants.

 

“You need not concern yourself Senator.” Obi-Wan quips lightly. “Yoda is quite against your children receiving any sort of Force training. His concern lies in the interest the Empire might take in them should their existence be discovered.”

 

“So...”she murmurs softly. “What were the plans you made, when it seemed like I would not live?”

 

Obi-Wan jerks his head and looks at her sharply. “Those plans don't matter now, Padmé. We're all very relieved you have recovered. There's been far too much death of late.”

 

Padmé swallows and steels herself for the question that she has to ask. It's now or never. She may never find the strength again.

 

“What happened to him on that planet Obi-Wan? You told me he was alright, but you were lying, weren't you?”

 

Obi-Wan doesn't so much nod, as hang his head. “He's dead Padmé. We dueled. I won and he...fell onto volcanic sand at the edge of a lava river. He burned.”

 

Padmé stares ahead blankly. Her mask of calm is instinctive in the face of horror. She had known he was dead. Known immediately when she'd woken up that he was gone. Despite his reassurances to her, Obi-Wan would never have let Anakin get away with what he'd done.

 

“You've always been the better duelist.” she says and her voice rasps on the words, as she tries not to think of his beloved handsome face charring and peeling in the flames. “Why would he ever try-?”

 

Obi-Wan looks away, staring at the wall. “He was more powerful than I, and after he defeated Count Dooku, I think he became...overconfident.”

 

“It wasn't Dooku. It was me.” She sobs. “He kept dreaming I would die. He was convinced I was in danger. That he had to save me.”

 

Obi-Wan looks at her seriously. “It wasn't your fault Padmé. Do you think Anakin is the first Jedi to have a secret wife or children? In ten thousand years? It makes a man more likely to fall, but it doesn't make it inevitable.”

 

He shakes his head. “If anyone other than Palpatine and Anakin carry the blame, than we all carry the blame.”

 

It doesn't stop her tears. The babies feel heavy in her arms, but at least they've stopped crying.

 

“Here. Help me with them?”

 

It takes less than a second for Obi-Wan to ferry the babies back to their bassinets. He insists she remain seated to save her strength.

 

The babies fuss when they're put down, but Obi-Wan hits switch that sets the bassinets gently rocking and they quiet.

 

He holds her and let's her cry against his shoulder.

 

“You loved him too!” she almost shouts at one point. “Don't you care?”

 

It takes him a long time to reply. “I loved him, but you loved him better. And...what with the war, I have been prepared to lose Anakin for years. I've already let him go...”

 

He pets her hair and she eventually cries herself out.

 

She laughs again, brokenly. “We decided we weren't going to fall in love, and then the next thing we knew we were getting married.”

 

She curls in on herself.

 

“I don't know what to do Obi-Wan.” she admits softly. “There must be something I can do. Some way I can fight. I...I just can't see it right now. But, it must be there....all the stars can't have burned out and left us in the dark.”

 

Obi-Wan sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I don't think there is anything left to do. The Jedi are lost, the Republic destroyed...but you are not. Not yet.”

 

She looks up at him, and sees something like his old ever present judgment and sheer bloody minded stubbornness, and it's a relief. Obi-Wan is still in there somewhere. Maybe they aren't just ghosts. Maybe he will recover from this loss. Maybe she will too.

 

She nods and wipes at her face. “Tell me what the plans were- that you made when you thought I wouldn't live.”

 

Obi-Wan hesitates. “Yoda and your friend Bail Organa are still here. I'll give you a minute, and we can go discuss the matter with them.” he suggests.

 

Padmé wipes at her face again, and straightens her spine.

 

“No need for a moment, I'm ready now.”

 

Something flickers in Obi-Wan's expression, for the first time since she woke up after the twins were born, there's something there other than loss.

 

He's looking at her very strangely. She follows his gaze and glances down to the white hospital shift she is still wearing. She realizes that he has never seen her without a toilette of some kind. Even when she was a girl in disguise as a handmaiden she had been dressed very carefully.

She knows he is not shocked at her appearance. He is a Jedi, and a General. He has seen worse. It is that she, Amidala, would go out in such disarray that shocks him. That she would abandon something he must have always viewed as integral to his understanding of her.

 

As if he had casually left his lightsaber on a desk before leaving the room.

 

_Anakin had done that once. Left his lightsaber on her desk. Not casually though, it had been a gesture of his love for her._ _**This lightsaber is my life, and I give it to you...** _

 

His manners still perfect, Obi-Wan doesn't say anything and instead offers his arm to her and together they walk out of the hospital room, to go and decide their futures.

 

 

 

 

 

The talk around the table is tense.

 

“Delay, indefinitely we cannot.” Yoda reminds her curtly. “Noticed your absence will be. Search for you the Empire will.”

 

Her survival is inconvenient to the Grand Master because it means time must be wasted making new plans that account for her.

 

She looks sadly at Bail Organa, who is too well bred to make any sign of having noticed her disheveled appearance, but whose eyes betray the panic and fear of a cornered animal.

 

 _Times must be desperate indeed,_ she imagines him thinking, _for Padmé Amidala to allow anyone to see her looking like_ _ **that**_ _._

 

The plans they had made in case of her death were simple, direct and would have worked perfectly in concealing her children from hostile forces.

 

She complicates matters. She is too well known to hide anywhere but the remotest locations, and too beloved to be able to simply disappear without explanation.

 

Nor does she trust her ability to care for her children without help.

 

The Jedi must go into hiding. Bail must continue is work in the Senate, so that he can use his position to create some sort of network that might be able to one day resist the new regime.

 

But, there is no obvious answer to her predicament.

 

As a vocal opponent to his regime and the leader of the opposition to his rule, Padmé, like many of her closest colleagues and friends in the Senate, would likely find herself arrested if she tried to return to the political arena.

 

However, as a popular figure from the Emperor's homeworld who had been instrumental to his rise to power, it was equally possible that she might be allowed to quietly slip into obscurity, and retire to the Lake Country.

 

But she doubts it.

 

Not Amidala who had broken the Trade Federation blockade, who had stood in the Arena in Geonosis and fired the first shots of the Clone Wars and who had campaigned tireless against the war from the very beginning.

 

Many have considered her the leader of the opposition faction. She was also, shamefully, the catalyst for the chancellor's rise- a pawn whose name and actions had helped advance his agenda.

It had been her representative who had brought forth the motion to grant him emergency powers. It have been her vote of non-confidence that had elected him in the first place.

 

She doesn't know what to do. She owes it to the galaxy to try and right the wrongs that she has inadvertently helped to create. She also owes it to her children to do everything she can to keep them all alive.

 

“Bail, what do you think?” she asks. He has always been more cautious in his politics than her. Less willing to risk collateral damage for his principles, but still as brave as any man alive.

 

Bail looks at her and clears his throat.

 

“We have spoken of the organization Mon Motha and I intended to build should the Emperor...do what he has done. But, Mon and I have agreed to the Emperor's policies in order to remain in a position where we can help people. So, we can't openly have anything to do with the Resistance. And all great causes need a charismatic leader, both to rally people to our cause and to keep Mon and myself from falling under scrutiny...-”

 

Amidala smiles, thinking of Sabé and her other loyal handmaidens and bodyguards. She understands what he is suggesting.

 

“I would be your body double.” she jokes. “Speaking your words as if they were my own, drawing the fire of enemies. Acting as the obvious target.”

 

Bail nods. “If you wanted. Of course you are welcome to be involved with the...uh... project if you wanted, but it's just a thought. This way you could retire to the Lake Country and we could arrange things to look like you are coordinating the network from there. That way you could live quietly with your children, but if they ever begin to investigate who was running the Rebellion-”

 

“They'll find me.”

 

“And since we'll have been waiting for them to do just that, you'd all be able to escape well ahead of them, and lead them on a merry chase.”

 

For the first time since the Republic fell and the Temple burned, Padmé grins. “Perfect.”

 

The grin slides off her face as she realizes something. “But, my children...Palpatine will want them. Anakin was so powerful...and...” she trails off and looks at Obi-Wan who nods.

 

“That cannot be allowed to happen Padmé” he confirms.

 

“Mere political matters these are,” Yoda mutters. “Too risky returning to Naboo with the children is. Perhaps, go to Alderaan you could. Provide you with false documents, Viceroy Organa, might perhaps be able to. Play his part in the plan you still could from there.”

 

Bail shakes his head. “I haven't got access to that sort of black-market material yet. I hope to soon, and certainly in the future I would help you but as things stand now?-” he shrugs helplessly. “Perhaps you could just announce that you are withdrawing from the Senate and intend to retire on Alderaan? It's not so unbelievable.”

 

Padmé bites her lip, and looks at Obi-Wan. “Does Palpatine know for sure that the father of my children is Anakin Skywalker?”

 

There is an exchange of glances.

 

“Almost certainly. Far too likely a chance to risk.” Obi-Wan admits.

 

Padmé stares blankly at the table. “But, he doesn't know anything about them. Thanks to my droid's discretion he doesn't even know how many there are, because Anakin didn't know, and so couldn't have told him...” _like he'd told him all the rest of our secrets..._

 

"I can't retire to Alderaan because one day the Emperor would come for my children, because they are Force Sensitve." She bites her lip. "I go into hiding and if I am ever suspected...then we are all three of us lost.”

 

Obi-Wan clears his throat. “I would go with you Padmé. To protect you all. For Anakin's sake. Together, all of us can out run the Empire.”

 

Padmé considers this. “Given the current climate, and the militarization of so many previously peaceful worlds, I don't know if that will be possible.”

 

“Than we can hide. There are worlds out there where even this terrible war has been little more than a distant rumour. If we live quietly, and anonymously, the Empire will never find us.”

 

Padmé considers this. A life of quiet, and ordinary work. Some small job on some small world with her babies in the evenings, and Obi-Wan's watchful presence always at her back.

 

It is pleasant, in a certain way, to imagine that she could be happy in that sort of life. That she could be content laying down her meager weapons and leaving the fight to others.

 

But, she knows what it would really be, for her to live like that. To now, after everything, cease her opposition to tyranny and to instead live quietly under it. It would be an admission of defeat, and she knows that the despair, which even now threatens to eat her alive, would surely devour her. Death by inches across a span of years, the galaxy suffering, and her able to do something, but being too selfish and too cowardly to risk it.

 

Padmé has been called many things in her life. She has been rash, naive, foolish, and untested, but she has never been a coward.

 

Even in hiding she would not be able to keep quiet and invisible. To do so is impossible. To do so would be to accept eventually dying by her own hand.

 

“What sort of worlds were you thinking of?” she asks, because she is a mother. She has dreamed of these children her entire adult life. She has wanted them and loved them long before she ever felt them kick.

 

Obi-Wan glances at Yoda. “Nothing definite. Yoda plans to go into hiding in the Dagobah system which is almost completely devoid of sentient life. I had planned to retire to Tatooine, in order to watch over Luke, who we had planned to take to the relatives that Anakin still has there. Both systems are very remote and has neither a Separatist or Imperial presence.”

 

“So, I would have to choose a sparsely populated world as well?” she probes. “One that was remote.”

 

Obi-Wan nods. “Those are the only ones that would work for figures as well known as us. Unless we found those willing to hide us, but I personally couldn't put someone in danger like that.”

 

She has options. Life in exile. Life in hiding. Life under the Empire. Each one of them would be lived on a knife's edge of uncertainty and danger. 

 

No one suggests that she leave her children in the care of someone else, even though it is the clearest and most obvious solution. Twins are more conspicuous than single children. If they are separated, than it means that even if one is captured, the other will still be safe.

 

It would be the easiest thing in the world to hide the children under assumed names, just two more in the endless sea of war orphans. No one will even know to look for them. They'll assume she has them with her.

 

 

Padmé closes her eyes. “I am too conspicuous.” she admits. Thinking of her second trip to Tatooine and how she had stood out like a peacock among pheasants. “If they are with me their identities are obvious. Anywhere else they are only two babies, no connection to Anakin Skywalker, or the Jedi. Just two babies, who might be a little Force sensitive. Though I expect it won't be long before even speculating about such things becomes taboo.”

 

“Padmé. No. We can't ask that of you!” Bail interjects. “We'll find a way to keep you all safe and together.”

 

“There is no way to keep us all safe. Not indefinitely. No matter what method we choose there is a risk, but this way-” she swallows. “This way, if one of us is caught the others will survive, and if, as seems very likely, I am caught then my children will survive. This way we all get the best chance possible, to live as long as possible.”

 

“Padmé-” Obi-Wan says softly. “Don't do this. I know it's not what you want, and it's not what Anakin would have wanted either-”

 

“ANAKIN IS NOT HERE!” Padmé screams, slamming her hands down onto the table. “YOU BURNED HIM ALIVE!!!”

 

They stare at her in shock.

 

“You cannot tell me, Obi-Wan, that they wouldn't be safer without me.” She continues softly through clenched teeth.

 

Obi-Wan stares at her and says nothing.

 

She stares at the table eyes as her eyes fill with tears. “They will be safer without me. Without me as a mother they can disappear. With me as a mother they will always be the children of a Jedi and a Queen.”

 

Obi-Wan leans over and puts his hand on hers. “They will always be your children Padmé. Just as they will always be Anakin's.”

 

His face is so serious and so earnest that she feels fourteen again, putting her safety into the hands of two unknown Jedi.

 

She nods. “Who were you going to send him to? On Tatooine? When you thought I was dying?”

 

“Owen Lars. Anakin's stepbrother. He still lives there, and the moisture farm is relatively prosperous, but more importantly it is isolated.”

 

She shakes her head. “No. I mean, yes, but first, there's a man I know Anakin once looked at as a brother, he was named Kitster and they were children together. Ask him first, if you can find him.”

 

Obi-Wan nods. “Alright.”

 

“And Bail will take the other?”

 

Bail nods. Bail had always planned to adopt, she remembers, with that same distant voice. He would be a better father than Anakin would have, even on Ani's best day, even if the war had never come and they had never had to leave the Lake Country, Bail would be a better father to his adopted child than Anakin ever could be. She knows that, because she remembers what happened with Anakin's apprentice. He'd loved her, too, but that hadn't helped her in the end.

 

“As safe as can be made, the children will be. This, I do promise solemnly.” Yoda tells her.

 

She nods sharply and jerks unsteadily to her feet. “Well, now that's decided I think I'll go....prepare.”

 

 

 

 

_We are brave, your Majesty._

 

She has been faced with impossible choices before. This time, it is not her who will be protected by a careful mask of anonymity and unimportance. This time it is not her who is running, for the sake of those left behind, so that she can live, and return to free them.

 

This time, it will be her wearing the conspicuous robes, taking the expected path, and bracing every moment for a blow that may or may not come.

 

She had told Bail (had it only been three days ago?) that she did not expect she would be allowed to live long, now that Palpatine was Emperor and her colleagues on the petition of the two thousand already arrested or killed.

 

Well, so be it. She would do her best to live, and every day he failed to kill her would be a day he did not spend scrutinizing his remaining senators. Everyday he failed to kill her would be a victory she had snatched from him. For a certain point of view, she's spent her whole life fighting unwinnable battles, and she's even managed to win a few of them. She's not about to give up now.

 

Padmé Amidala is twenty-seven and the great lights of her life have gone out: her husband is dead, the Republic has fallen, her allies and friends are arrested, dead or in hiding, her political work has proven futile, her children will grow up not knowing her.

 

But, she has been a rebel Queen before, and she will stand again as a serene pillar of strength against the darkness- this time not just for one world, but for a thousand. She will cede no ground, and every inch they advance they will have to fight for, because she will not relent. Until her dying breath she is going scratch and claw to stand between these shadows and everything and everyone that still remains of what she once loved.

 

And if her defeat is inevitable, as it may well be, she will die knowing that her death gains the Empire nothing, and may buy one more year, one more day, one more hour of freedom for her children, and hope for the Rebellion.

 

 

 

 

She holds her children for the last time. They are small, and red and squawling and so infinitely perfect her heart aches. She cries when she gives them to Obi-Wan, and usually she would be embarrassed at such a display of emotion in front of a Jedi but, she is so far past any emotion other than despair, grief and determination.

 

_Her heart cannot break. It is already shattered._

 

To her surprise Yoda, the old Grand Master of the Jedi Order, insists that she must have contact with her children. In her role as official figurehead for the rebellion she will need many identities to travel undetected, and he insists that once these have been established she set two aside and use them for the sole purpose of visiting her children.

 

It is still a risk, but it is a lesser one and she will see them again.

 

She does not watch them leave. Does not turn to see Bail and Obi-Wan disappear into the darkness that had swallowed everything else.

 

Instead she turns, already wearing what Anakin had always called her “Politician Face” the perfectly neutral expression that gave away only what she wanted to convey and concealed everything else. She glides across the medical bay, walking in her dirty paper gown, already sliding back into the regal pose of power.

 

She goes to her ship, and finds one of the few changes of clothes she has kept on it. It is not quite sufficient but it will have to do.

 

She sets the computer for Naboo, and makes the jump into hyperspace.

 

It takes her a long time to find the other things she's looking for, but a quick conversation with Threepio points her towards a set of ornamental pots tucked away in a disused drawer.

 

As a former Queen of Naboo, she still has the right to wear the sacred makeup of the office, in certain forms on certain occasions.

 

She never has before. It had been a burden she'd been all too happy to release.

 

So, it takes her a few tries before she can get it right. Her application has never been perfect. She's usually had help. But, this is one risk she cannot allow her beloved handmaids to take for her. Not when two of them have already died for her. This is one road she cannot even ask them to follow her down, not when the destination is so likely to be her own death.

 

Eventually, and much more slowly than the walk and posture, the old skill returns, and Padmé steps back to admire the effect.

 

She has transformed her face into the mask of grief usually only worn by the Queen at funerals.

 

She fixes her hair, and does the best coiffure she can manage under the circumstance.

 

She finishes just before they have to revert to real space.

 

She lets her ship fall into orbit around her home planet and then she switches on her holo-recorder.

 

“My name is Padmé Amidala, and the false Emperor has murdered my husband and killed my child-”

 

The propaganda will never allow such a message to appear on the holo-net. It is lucky then, that she has the short-range planer specific frequencies that are used for local communication.

 

It doesn't take long for Threepio and Artoo to program the computer to send her message as loudly as she can on as many frequencies as she can.

 

She makes another jump and records another message. And another and another. In every one of them she promises to continue to shout the name of freedom until her dying breath. It is, she thinks ruefully, probably not a promise she will have to keep for long.

 

She makes a note on the calendar and begins counting down the days until she sees her children again. She hopes it will come before the Empire catches up to her.

 

But, who can say what the future will bring, in such troubled times as these?

 


	2. Thirty-two and Losing Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Padmé goes to Tatooine to try and convince Obi-Wan to join the rebellion. And Also to see her son. That too.

Padmé's is thirty-two, and she no longer remembers what it feels like to live without a mask. The galaxy has decayed around her and yet, to all appearances she is untouched. Still serene, and poised, beautifully dressed, coifed and painted.

 

This is untrue, of course. She is not the woman she once was, and she cringes now at the naiveté that not even the Clone Wars had managed to rob her of.

 

 

She berates herself everytime the Empire manages to shock her with their cruelty or impress her with the ingenuity of it's unfairness. She does her best to endure, though, and works on as many fronts and in as many roles as the Rebellion can find for her.

 

She is the Rebel's Queen, and she is wanted on more worlds than she could ever name.

 

She travels mainly on her private yacht, the one she'd taken to Mustafar, packed with only the essentials thinking she'd be back on Coruscant within the week. She'd never made it back to Coruscant and in her heart of hearts she is grateful. She'd rather remember the great City as it had been, not as it was now, renamed Imperial Centre and neutered of all that had once made it amazing.

 

One of her most common missions is ferrying visas to well-placed contacts to help those non-human refugees fleeing the Central galactic worlds and the discriminatory pro-human laws that the Empire passed with ever increasing frequency and harshness.

 

She wears a hundred faces, and a thousand names, but more often than not those she's meeting recognize her by her old one: Padmé Amidala, and that is why they trust her.

 

It`s the same with her current mission.

 

 

She enters a coordinate and makes the jump to hyperspace. She takes a moment to arrange her documents. For this trip she uses one of her most mundane aliases- Ami Korro, a trader of modest means, whose documents indicate Onderon citizenship, explaining away any desires she might have to keep away from Imperial entanglements, after all Onderon was a Seperatist world.

 

Landing on Tatooine will never not be a shock. The heat hits her like a punch to the face, and she is reminded why she can never wear paint in this identity. The sun would make her sweeat it off in less than an hour.

 

She goes first to the trading centres of Mos Eisley (Mos Espa being too notorious a smuggler's nest these days to be worth the risk for minor players such as herself) and strikes a deal with her usual buyer- a Rodian of bent but not broken morality who pays well for the privelege of moving her luxury produce deeper into the unknown quadrants and into the hands of the elite there.

 

They agree on a terms and a time tomorrow to transfer her cargo of fresh fruit from the Mid-Rim, and then she heads out of the market towards a small stall selling water. There's a small child sitting on one of the stools happily chatting with the stall owner who is keeping a close eye on him.

 

Padmé sits down next to him, and the little boy looks at her and smiles. “Hello Auntie!!”

 

Padmé smiles. “Hello Luke. What are you doing here by yourself?”

 

He puffs his chest out. “Kitster's left me as look-out for you while he hunts down old Ben.”

 

“Oh?”

 

Luke nods. “Yup! Uncle Owen won't let Ben onto the farm anymore, but Beru still talks to him on the radio.” he leans in closer and whispers. “but we mustn't tell Uncle! He doesn't want me speaking to him.”

 

Padmé raises her eyebrows. On her last visit Obi-Wan and Owen had been getting along well, she wonders what changed.

 

“I'm supposed to take you to the secret spot, so you can meet him. Ben says it's a secret and no one in town is supposed to know he was ever even here.”

 

“Oh and why are have you been chosen for such a dangerour mission?” she joke.

 

He grins at her. “Because if someone's walking with a little kid and the kid is making a fuss than the Buketheads don't ask for ID!” he explains chirpily. “Kitster taught me the trick! It works every time.”

 

The bottom drops out of Padmé's stomach. She doesn't know whether it's just a silly little game Kitster is playing with his sort-of-nephew, or a hint of her son being in real danger.

 

“Let's try it then?”

 

He grins and hops off the stool, waving goodbye to the stall owner with a bit of Huttese.

 

Padmé takes his hand and they walk through the winding streets of Mos Espa.

 

He starts whining whenever they see a Stormtrooper, and he's right they always hurry past.

 

Charmed, Padmé smiles and lets herself be led through the narrow streets, to the back door of a mechanic shop where a human man with black hair lets them in and swings Luke around with a babble of rapid Huttese, that makes Luke scream with delight and laughter.

 

She's heard of Kitster but never met him. He, along with Owen Lars, Beru Whitesun and Obi-Wan Kenobi are the covenant that protect her only son. It is to Kitster, not herself or that Luke runs when he trips over his own feet and scrapes his hand. It is Kitster who knows Luke's favourtie snacks, and has a few on hand to stall a tantrum when Luke starts to get grumpy.

 

She spends the day among the scraps. It feels very familiar.

 

_Are you an angel?_

 

Luke already has an unerring knack for what is and isn't dangerous and proudly shows her bits and pieces he's collected, along with leading her to where the finest parts Kitster had scrounged sit in proud glory on display.

 

Padmé allows the little boy to drag her around and explain his various projects to her. It's surprisingly exhausting, but she wishes the afternoon would never end.

 

It does, though, even the long afternoons on Tatooine must end.

 

_My name is Anakin, and I'm a person._

 

 

Kitster knows the song that Like likes to hear when the suns set and it's time for little humans to go to bed and Luke falls asleep in a pile of rags clutching a part whose function he had carefully explained to her, but whose name she could not recall.

 

For a long time she just sits and looks at him. He's so much bigger than when she last saw him, nearly a year ago. He may be her child, but in all the ways that matter, she is not his mother. That role is shared between a former slave and a farmer's wife, even if neither of them admit it.

 

Kitser comes and sits on his haunches next to her. “He's a good boy. Minds his Aunty well, and will probably not drive his uncle to a stroke for at least ten years.”

 

Padmé tries to give him a withering glare, but she knows it comes out a bit watery.

 

“He's safe?”

 

Kitser shrugs. “As safe as any child can be on Tatooine.”

 

Padmé nods and blinks. “He seems happy.”

 

Kitser chuckles and shakes his head. “That's got nothing to do with Tatooine. Luke's got a sweet soul, and he's always excited when he gets to come in to town. Probably because I spoil him whenever I get the chance to see him.”

 

“Do you see him often?” Padme asks. “You were Anakin's brother, more than Owen was, he would have wanted him with you.”

 

Kitser sighs and picks Luke up. Luke clings to him like a buzzdroid, still dead asleep. “I wish I saw him more. For Anakin's sake, if nothing else. But, he's safer as the nephew of a well-liked Moisture Farmer, than as the ward of a former slave. But, Owen understands family. He makes sure I see him.”

 

Padmé follows him to a back room, where he tucks Luke into a little cot that's been made up for him.

 

“So, I see him enough.” Kitser continues. “He'll know where his father comes from. He'll know his history.”

 

Padmé lingers in the doorway. “Good.”

 

Kitser turns to look at her and then his eyes catch on something over her shoulder. “You're contact is here.” he informs her coldly. “I'll give you two some privacy.”

 

He leaves, and now it's just the two of them. _The Queen and the Jedi, but not the right Jedi._

 

Obi-Wan looks old. The sun and the wind have carved lines on his face and large patched of his hair and beard are already white.

 

He just stares at her. She's visited the planet many times before, but she's never sought him out or demanded that he meet her. He knows she's here on rebel business.

 

 

“You should come out to the farm for a few week. Beru would be happy to have you.” Obi-Wan suggests blandly, but there's an accusation there. “Or you could stay with me in the Jundland wastes, but I think you'd find the farm more comfortable. It would do Luke some good to spend time with you.” It would probably do you some good as well.

 

Padmé turns to meet his gaze and her own mask on, countering his carefully schooled expression. He doesn't want to see her.

 

He wishes she hadn't summoned him. He only came because he was worried her search for him would put Luke in danger.

 

She knows this instinctively, and she understands.

 

They have always been more alike than either of them want to admit.

 

From a certain point of view, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Queen Amidala of the Naboo grew up together. The adults they became were forged in the crucible of the same war.

 

In many many ways they were alike. They dreamed the same dreams- dreams of peace and plenty, of time freed for the pursuit of art, and philosophy. They both preferred the elegant solutions of diplomacy and duplicity over the uncivilized method of brute Force. They were the pair of them strategists, and ponderers.

 

They both believed in protocol and order and the rule of law. They were both governed by their principles, and guided by higher ideals.

 

At one time, they had both been terribly lonely.

 

A person would be forgiven for thinking that since they were so alike, and had grown up together and shared this problem of loneliness that there was an obvious solution.

 

They ought to have become friends, and found in one another the confidante that they lacked.

 

No matter what your point of view this was not what they did.

 

Instead Obi-Wan worked to become the paragon of the Jedi. He befriended many in his travels and met all with an open heart and a respectful mind. He was a devoted teacher, and friend. Those questions he entertained, those doubts that plagued him he kept to himself, until long after the time that voicing them would have made any real difference.

 

Padmé found herself more and more alone in a world of politicians and corruption until an impetuous young man, with beautiful eyes and a confidence that made her smile and duck her head like a girl burst into her life like a flash grenade, and said “I love you” and promised “You'll never need to be lonely again.” And, oh, she loved him terribly.

 

It was only then, that she truly came to be friends with Obi-Wan Kenobi, because he was the steady hand on the helm of her husband's life, and because, well, from a certain point of view they had grown up together, and from a certain point of view they were very alike.

 

And even before this friendship, even before she had known Obi-Wan the man, she had always trusted young Jedi Kenobi.

 

 

And now, they have both lost everything that mattered.

 

Except, they haven't have they? Padmé has found something of her old life to salvage, and she has these two precious new lives to cherish. What has Obi-Wan got left? Luke? A hole in the wasteland where he meditates?

 

It doesn't matter. She's here to deliver a message not ponder what might be destroyed for Obi-Wan if she says the words.

 

She looks at him. “Anakin is still alive.” It's a relief to be able to talk safely. To just spit the words out that have been stuck in her throat for so long. “He's Darth Vader.”

 

It's the worst thing she could ever say to him. You didn't kill him. You didn't destroy him. You didn't grant him the mercy of death. You failed him twice. Once when he fell, once when he lived.

 

But, then again it's Kenobi. Maybe he's known all along.

 

Had he known that day the twins were born? He's lied before (he's always been an excellent liar).

 

He probably knows. She thinks. He's Obi-Wan. You should never guess what he does and does not know. He'd known about her and Anakin all along. How could he not know about this?

 

He's Obi-Wan after all. He never lets on what he knows and he always knows more than he lets on.

 

Obi-Wan looks at her. “Well, I suppose that's rather inconvenient for you.” he pauses as if thinking. “And it makes my job a bit harder.”

 

Padmé stares at him. “That's it? He's alive and he's a monster and that's is?”

 

Obi-Wan shrugs. “What is it exactly that you expect from me here, Padmé?”

 

“Vader is the single greatest killer the Empire has if the reports we're getting are to be believed. I guess I expect you to do something!!”

 

Obi-Wan's mouth quirks up at the corner. “I did. I cut off three of his limbs, left him to burn and took his lightsaber. I doubt his continued existance is anything less than excruciating.”

 

Padmé swallows. She wants to be sick or she wants to cry. She`s not sure which will happen. Padmé stares resolutedly ahead, forcing her mind to face the present and trying to banish the image of his face. His beloved face burning, and scared. Trapped in a body half-machine. He's hate that. Her wild impulsive young husband.

 

 

“Exactly. You and you alone have bested Dark Lords of the Sith in combat. You could change things and you're wasted out there, Obi-Wan. Come back with me. Join the rebellion”

 

He smiles that familiar wry smile, that usually filled her with fondness but now just makes her ache.

 

“I prefer it here.” he tells her. “I look forward to many dull years of peace, and to watching Luke grow up from a safe distance.”

 

Padmé frowns, frustrated. “If you refuse to kill Vader that's one thing, but all the same you would be an incredible asset to this rebellion. You're beloved, even now and no one can fight like you...not even Anakin could.”

 

Obi-Wan shrugs. “Being beloved did not save Queen Apailaina. It will not save me, either if I return to face the Empire. I am finished with fighting. Three years of war wore me to the bone, and this one you're fighting? It will last a lifetime.” he shakes his head. “A warrior like me cannot fight forever. As even Anakin eventually learned, to all our sorrow.”

 

He says it so neutrally. As thought Anakin had hurt himself in one of his ridiculous stunts, or been dismissed. As if he hadn't betrayed Obi-Wan, the Jedi, and Padmé in one day. As if he hadn't murdered the younglings in the temple and nearly killed his wife in a rage. As though Obi-Wan hadn't bested him in single combat and left him burning on the shore of a lake of lava.

 

“Obi-Wan!” she begins to protest.

 

“No.” he says sharply. The harsh ligh of the shop casts deep shadows on his face. “I watched the last war destroy good men, good soldiers. I watched civilians suffer needlessly and was powerless to help them.” he puts his head in his hand and for a moment he seems bent and old and weary. Not the straight, impecable Obi-Wan she has come to know. He sighs, and looks up at her. “I'm tired Padmé. The Jedi are defeated. There's nothing left for me to fight for.”   
  


She swallows. She recognizes his despair as being a cousin of her own. “There is always Hope.” she tells him. “And hope is always worth fighting for.”

 

“There is life right now.” he corrects her. “It is not the same as hope.”

 

She frowns and wants to hit him.. This isn't the Obi-Wan she's known. The Obi-Wan she's known is tenacious and idealistic and as determined as she is.

 

But, then she doubts that she is the Padmé that Obi-Wan had known. Not dust spattered, and dressed in rough spacer's gear the colour of dirt, her face bare and her hair haphazardly scrapped away from her face and hald wind-blown anyway.

 

It occurs to her these may be parts of themselves they can never get back. That she may never be able to see that careful beauty as anything but a necessary mask and he may never speak again with the quiet conviction that had always been sincere, despite the wry smile he had so often worn. But, she somehow can`t believe that Obi-Wan Kenobi, would refuse to step forward one last time, to slay the last monster in a long long line of monsters.

 

_Maybe he's wise enough to know that if he kills this monster, another will just take it's place._

 

For the first time her anger at Anakin burns hotter than her grief or her regret. It burns so hot it blots out everything else.

 

“So that's it? You refuse to move from this dustball? You refuse to do anything about the monster you unleashed on the galaxy? It's not your fight anymore?”

 

Obi-Wan just looks at her. “If you think Anakin is a monster now, you are mistaken. In all probability he was always a monster. We just loved him too much to see it.”

 

And that stops her short because, she had seen it. She'd always known. And he was Obi-Wan, it hadn't occurred to her that he hadn't. But, maybe he hadn't.

 

She wishes just once she had lost her temper at her husband. Because she never had and he had deserved it so many times.

 

How could Anakin do this to Obi-Wan Kenobi? How could he do this to _her?_ How could he betray them like this, when he had always claimed to love them both so strongly?

 

The Jedi, she could understand, Anakin despite his conviction and his determination had never been well suited to the life of simplicity and service they led. She knew that to him the Republic had never been more that an abstract ideal, next to meaningless in the face of his personal loyalties, and she had come to understand that he had needed the war to be justified, because he would not have been able to stand it if he had even let himself consider that it might have been wrong, and the deaths and suffering all for nothing.

 

And she had always known the violence he was capable of. It wasn't as if she had been caught unaware. She had known who he was, walked into the marriage with clear eyes and a full heart. He had told her what he had done after he had found his mother. She had known, and she had loved him anyway.

 

( _ **Loves**_ _him anyway_ ).

 

But, Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan had been his partner. They had been a team, and he had loved Anakin as dearly as Padmé ever had, even if it had been a slightly stiff very Jedi sort of love. He had believed in Anakin, loved him, supported for him, fought for him from the day the boy from Tatooine had been entrusted to his care, and Anakin had repaid all that in blood, and betrayal.

 

Of course, the opposite is also true- Obi-Wan alone has seen the troubles in her husband's heart and warned her about them. If he had only been there during those few final fated days, would Anakin have fallen at all? Or would a few quiet words of reassurance and faith have halted that terrible slide to madness that had ended in murder and fire and death?

 

Yes, there is no doubt in here mind, that Obi-Wan, had he been present might have been able to turn the tide.

 

It occurs to her that he knows this, and he probably has already heard the news she'd intended to give him, about the Sith Lord Darth Vader who stands at the Emperor's side in armour extensive enough to hide even the catastrophic injuries of lava-burns.

 

_Yes, she is angry at Anakin, for leaving them like this. She cannot forgive that he could have betrayed them both._

 

“How can you say that?” She asks. “How can you say that about him. About the Rebellion. How can you just give up and decide that none of it mattered?”

 

He sighs. “I am tired Padmé. I spent three years in war that proved to be meaningless. My people and my way of life are gone. There aren't many battles left in me, and the war your fighting, it may take a lifetime to win. More than one lifetime.”

 

He looks off into the distance. “Perhaps, you're right, and there is hope. I admit, sometimes I look at your son, I feel the strength of his power in the Force and I think...maybe we do have a chance.” he looks back at her. “But, I won't be a man who raises a boy like him to be an assassin. He's better than that.”

 

Padmé pinches her lips and stares at him. He looks away.

 

A lifetime ago she'd felt so young when she'd begged her husband to turn aside. Standing before Obi-Wan she feel old and ancient to her bones.

 

_She's missed him. All this time, and she'd never even realised it._

 

“If I join your rebellion, and I try to fight the Empire, I will die, and my death will accomplish nothing, except giving you one more martyr to your precious cause. If I wait, and allow this organization you're building begins to succeed, perhaps in the future, I might rejoin the fight in a way that could actually matter. And provide more than an inspirational corpse.”

 

This is a fair point, not to mention a plan that gives both him and the rebellion a fair chance. It is so like him, a careful, considerate, and with a low risk of failure. She thinks about his kindness, his ever present consideration and perfect manners, even as he stands here and speaks of his hopelessness and grief. She finds herself examining that perfect patrician Stewjon profile.

 

“That's a very reasonable course of action.” she tells him, still full of rage, and grief and frustration at her own hopelessness.

 

“Yes, I thought so.” He agrees primly, mouth pursed in annoyance at the suggestion it could be anything else.

 

“Your plans usually are.” A laugh burbles out of her unexpectedly as she thinks of all of Anakin's ridiculous plans, and wild swings of emotion. How she'd loved him and how she'd counted on Obi-Wan to keep him safe.

 

“Why couldn't I have fallen in love with you?” she asks.

 

He looks at her and smiles sadly. “I wouldn't have loved you back, not the way Anakin did. He loved you so terribly much, Padmé. Whatever he did in the end, that was true.”

 

She sighs and looks away. “It was terrible wasn't it? The way we loved each other. It was too much. It didn't leave enough room everything else.”

 

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Perhaps. As a Jedi, I'm the wrong person to ask.”

 

 

 

 

They reach the bay where her ship is being stored. She clasps his hands. “Thank you, for guarding him, Obi-Wan. It's a debt I'll never be able to repay.”

 

“Well, you know my price, Padmé. You must visit, and often. Your son deserves to know his mother.”

 

She tries to smile. “I promise I will try.”

 

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Do or Do not, there is no try.”

 

She rolls her eyes and boards her ship. Tomorrow her cargo will be unloaded, and she will have neither the excuse not the spare credits to justify lingering. She will shed her skin of Ami Karro, and not don it again until her next visit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a midnight posting, eh?
> 
> I hope you like these ramblings of a crazy person. Comments are always appreciated. Also, this fic will probably be a 4 chapters long now. Cause epilogues and whatnots.


	3. Thirty Five and Acceptance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Padmé visits her daughter.

 

Padmé Amidala is thirty-five and she is a hard woman, though you wouldn't know it to look at her as she slips quietly into the Alderaan Royal palace through a servants entrance. '

 

She is drapped in the soft flowing dress of a native, her hair carefully aranged. Her face as beautiful as ever. There is a gun strapped to her thigh beneath her robes, and a pocket of poison hidden in a back molar. Usually she wouldn't risk going out with so few defenses, but here on Alderaan she allows herself the luxury of softness.

 

It has been years since her appearance of delicacy and refinement has been anything but a front which hides gun calloused hands and skin toughened by wind, sun and the cold of space.

 

Padmé still acts as the figurehead for the rebellion. But, now she works almost exclusively in a diplomatic capacity, making underhanded agreements with everyone from morally bankrupt Imperial officers willing to sell to the Rebllion to line their own pockets, criminal syndicates and desperate governments in exile of conquered planets. She makes these agreements and gathers intelligence, but is compartmentalized from any real military information, and has almost no contact with the actual rebellion. She is it's emissary, it's figurehead and it's decoy.

 

The Empire hunts her with ever greater brutality, and there have been more than a few close calls in the last few years. More than a few dead civilians who got in the way, as well. It's a reality she ignores as best she can, considering the actual cause of this desperate pursuit.

 

_Anakin is looking for me._

 

She doesn't think about him. It's easier that way. She understands Obi-Wan's enthusiasm for turning away from the terror that the Galaxy has become. The impulse to focus on precious loved beings who you can convince yourself you actually can protect, and just let the rest of them look after themselves for once. 

 

_It's easier than admitting she doesn't love him anymore. It's easier than admitting that she does._

 

She climbs the servants staircase and slips onto the floor housing the Royal apartments. Her biometric signature opens one of the doors, and she glides into the room on silent feet.

 

Leia hears her anyways and rolls over with a groan. She pulls a blaster from beneath her pillow, and aims it steadily at Padmé who smiles and pull her hood off.

 

Leia shrieks in delight and tosses the blaster to the side, barrelling forward to pull Padmé into a hug.

 

“Auntie Dormé!!! It's been so long!!!”

 

Padmé holds her girl close and tries not to think about how long it really has been, and how dangerous it is that she's come here. Her cover here is as one of Bail's many relatives, but she is relatively certain that Leia suspects the truth of their relationship. They do not speak of it though. Young as she is, Leia is used to subterfuge and secrets. Whatever she does or does not know she keeps to herself.

 

 

 

The Empire is tracking her very closely now. There've been three close calls in the last two months where she barely evaded capture. It worries Bail who fears that despite their preperation for just this moment Padmé will fall into the hands of the Empire and all the secrets she has learned will be tortured out of her.

 

She hadn't had the heart to tell him, that she's carried poison on her for years. The Empire will not be taking her alive. Or if they do, they will not keep her that way for long.

 

This is a fact, but not one she likes to remember. Certainly, not when she's on Alderaan in the role of a distant relative of Bail's there on a visit.

 

Alderaan is close enough to the Core that traveling there is dangerous for Padmé, but Bail has done such a fine job protecting the planet from the wrath of the Empire that once she gets there she's in very little danger.

 

Alderaan has become Padmé's favourite place in the galaxy, not just because it is where she can be with her daughter, and not just because it reminds her of the home she may never see again, but because it is the only place where she doesn't need to play the part of Former Queen and Senator Amidala, leader of the resistance and hero to all who still suffer under tyranny.

 

She has an ever increasing sympathy for Obi-Wan Kenobi, his exhaustion with his celebrity during the clone wars, and his refusal to enter into another conflict where he would be expected once again to lead by example as the ever unflapped General and Jedi.

 

 

 

 

It is only on Alderaan that she feels she is the same girl who once let herself fall in love in the Lake Country. Who chased a young Jedi padawan across fields and star systems, and married him in defiance of all sense, and risk.

 

Here, on the jewel of the Core, there is room for light, and carelessness. It is an ordinary everyday thing to spend three hours teaching a little girl how to do an elaborate hairstyle that she has little interest in to begin with. There is time to pick wildflowers in the mountains to present to the Queen, and there is oppurtunity to study blacklisted texts that reside in the Royal library without fear of discovery by imperial soldiers.

 

Alderaan is very like Naboo, but Naboo was never so peaceful, or so secure.

 

Leia looks over her shoulder at her as Padmé finishes weaving her hair into one long braid. “Are you finished, Auntie? Winter will be here soon, and we've made plans to go into the city today. I don't want to look like a princess for that.”

 

Padmé makes a show of dusting off her hands and then holds them up. “All finished! And with plenty of time for you to meet Winter.”

 

Leia grins and runs off. She's not very ladylike. She's not much like Padmé was at that age. She's perfect though.

 

“Padmé” someone says behind her, and she's so unused to hearing her birth name that it actually makes her jump.

 

It is Queen Breha standing in the doorway. Bail's wife, who Padmé still doesn't know very well. The issue of the adoption makes things awkward between them in a way that just isn't there with Bail.

 

She supposes it is because Bail is Leia's father, whereas Padmé and Breha are both her mothers.

 

“Breha.” Padmé says, standing. “How are you?”

 

Breha shrugs. “Well, enough. Alderaan endures better than most worlds under the tyranny that we have found ourselves.”

 

Padmé nods, and looks out from the balcony where she is sitting. “Yes, you'd hardly believe anything was at all the matter based on your planet. I commend you for your work.”

 

“And I commend you for yours.” Breha replies, stepping closer, and sitting down next to her. “Which is what I wished to discuss with you. Bail does not share the details of his organization with me. He feels it would only endanger me to know, and put the rebellion at greater risk. And...” she sighs. “He knows I have cares enough, seeing to the well-being of my own people, and he does not wish to add to them, but you need to tell me honestly: How bad has it truly gotten out there? I haven't left the planet since the Republic fell, and the holo-net only shows us what they want us to know, but... the rumours have gotten to the point where they reach even the ears of a Queen.”

 

Padmé sighs. “Think of the worst of the Clone Wars. The terribly loses and destruction of worlds. It is a thousand times worse than that. Entire planets have been strip mined. Entire species eradicated on the pretext of involvement with Seperatist forces, or terrorism activity. The Geonosians have disappeared, how or why no one knows, but the Empire is responsible we're all certain. Kashyk has been subjugated, and the Wookies enslaved....I could go on. That sort of thing has happened on a hundred world's, and to all of the leading Seperatist ones.”

 

She shakes her head and watched as far down below Leia and her little friend run down the palace steps. “Despite the Rebellion's best efforts, we've only lost ground in the last eight years.”

 

Breha nods, face solemn. “I see now why Bail is so hesitant to speak about his work.”

 

Padmé meets the Queen of Alderaan's gaze. “This war does not call for nobility and heroics. It calls for sabotage, assassinations, and espionage. We'll never win otherwise.”

 

The Queen reaches over and squeezes her hand. “But we will win, my dear.”

 

“Of course. We have to. Otherwise, what was it all for?”

 

The Queen looks at her. She is older than Padmé, less idealistic, and more kind. She is the sort of woman that Padmé had always intended to become. Naiveté tempered by time, expedience tempered by kindness. A mother and a leader and a queen.

 

“Mama!” a voice shouts from the doorway, and they both turn. It's Leia back already, with her little friend Winter.

 

“Leia?!” Queen Breha gasps, “I thought you went to market!!”

 

“I was going!” She declares proudly shoving a bouquet of wildflowers into her mother's face. “But, then I saw the flowers and came back to give them to you! If I'd carried them all the way to market they'd have gotten ruined! Look! Winter picked some for you too!”

 

“You could have picked them on the way back.” Padmé suggests.

 

Leia turns to her quickly, as though she hadn't realized PadmÉ was there. “Oh. Auntie. I didn't pick any flowers for you.”

 

She eyes Winter's bunch, which the little girl had been in the process of also handing them to the Queen and then immediately and with surprising grace for a seven-year Winter demurely hands her bouquet to Padmé. “These flowers can be for you my lady.” she says, sweetly, ducking into a shallow curtsy.

 

Her form is perfect. Her speech clear, and her poise- well, it is this child- not the rambunctious Leia who has half climbed to stand on the bench but is distracted by her energetic recounting of the discovery of the patch of wildflowers that has her nearly bouncing as she talks- that reminds Padmé of her younger self.

 

Padmé feels her heart clench. When her children were small and she was absent she had always comforted herself by saying that there was time to know them once they were old enough to know her. Despite her realism in other matters, she had always held on to the bright hope that, once they were old enough to understand, she could tell them the real story, introduce them to each other and have an honest relationship with both...

 

But, as she once told Bail, a lifetime ago, she doubts she'll live that long.

 

She has always believed that the war would be won and she'd truly have a chance to be with her children. But it's been a long time, and the war looks more ready to be lost than anything else. To abandon the cause is to render the earlier choice to send her children to safety rather than raise them herself in uncertainty...meaningless and foolish.

 

Besides, her children had other parents now. Other families. They belong beneath different skies than the one she grew up under, and they steer by stars she doesn't know.

 

She smiles at Winter and makes a show of smelling the flowers. “Thank you my darling. They're beautiful.” Winter preens under the praise. Clearly proud of her fledgling decorum and diplomacy, where Leia has climbed up onto the bench at last and it now running back and forth along it as she chats with Queen Breha...with her _Mother_ about her studies.

 

Padme arranges her flowers and her skits, and stands. “Thank you for having me Breha. And do give Bail my best. I think I will be leaving soon.”

 

Breha smiles at her, and Leia starts whining that she's leaving so soon.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff fluff fluff. 
> 
> I like to think Leia would have been a handful. Sorry it's short but...idk it doesn't fit with what comes next and I just liked how it turned out. Comments feed the muse!!! Just sayin'....(also I need to stop posting at midnight)


	4. Thirty-Nine and Undefeated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Padmé abandons her duties to the Rebellion to go and try to talk some sense into her twelve year old son, who seems to be going though a rebellious phase of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this I apologize

Padmé is thirty-nine, and shocked to have lived so long, but that`s not important. What's important is the fact that Luke and Leia are both twelve years old and utterly impossible.

 

Leia has bullied, bribed, and thrown carefully time tantrums to force her parents into allowing her to become involved politically. She's started shadowing her father as much as she can, and going on diplomatic tours and charity missions.

 

She is a Force of Nature. Padmé couldn't be prouder.

 

Luke has the opposite problem, far from forcing his way into his parent's professions he is utterly uninterested in it, and, according to a holo-message Beru had ridden into town to send, was possibly falling in with a bad crowd, sneaking out at night and riding swoop bikes around the deesert. Even Kitster was having trouble keeping him in line, and Luke had always taken his edicts slightly more seriously than Owen or Beru's. Obi-Wan had been exactly no help at all according to Beru who seemed frantic with worry and completely at her wit's end.

 

Padmé suspects, given the tone of the message, and the awkward silence before the carefully worded request, that Luke has realized who she is to him, and this knowledge has contributed to his bad behaviour in some way.

 

It's the first time she's actually been asked to parent either of her children in a direct and specific way by one of their guardians. It gives her a little thrill that she's important enough to Luke that Beru thinks he'd listen to her.

 

 

 

The only problem is Cassian, she thinks with a scowl and a glance his way.

 

Cassian is a teenager, a promising recruit that the Rebellion hopes will one day make an excellent spy. He's currently acting as he aide, and has assisted her on the last three diplomatic envoys she's run. She's not sure whether Cassian's mission is to watch her and learn to ape her upper-class mannerisms for undercover assignments, or to just watch her very very carefully. Either way, she's certain he reports on her movements to Rebel command.

 

Cassian would do anything for the rebellion, which is why she needs to get rid of him before she can make a run to Tatooine to see Luke.

 

“Set a course for Lothal, and see to it the papers are in order.” She tells him.

 

Lothal is under heavy occupation, and there are active Rebel cells there, but it's also nominally Imperial controlled which means relief efforts are let in regularly.

 

She can leave Cassian with the Alderaani delegation that will be there helping run the refugee camp. She'll loose him in the crowds and get in and out quick. Easy, no muss, no fuss.

 

Except they drop out of hyperspace only to be informed by the holo-net that Viceroy and Princess Organa are currently visiting Lothal as part of a good-will tour to bring attention to the plight of refugees.

 

Everyone coming to and from the planet will be under increased scrutiny with such illustrious personages to protect, and Padmé's false visa is impeccable but she is a notorious rebel. All it takes is for one Imperial soldier to recognize her face and that would be it.

 

Her visa's list her as an Imperial socialite here to volunteer for the relief effort. Cassian is supposed to be her nephew. But that won't stand up to scrutiny now. The volunteers will be more closely screened if there's a chance they'll be interacting with a Senator.

 

She tells Cassian to keep to his pre-established identity, leaves instructions with Artoo and Threepio about how to handle her ship, and wearing her oldest most weather beaten clothing slips into the milling crowds or refugees waiting for handouts of food and water.

 

She scans the crowd. Orderly, sullen. Hopeless. The usual sight in an Imperial refugee camp. She doesn't see Leia, but she spots Bail manning a station that's handing out hydration packs.

 

It takes her the better part of the morning to work her way to the front of the crowd.

 

She meets Bail's eyes as he hands her the pack of purified water.

 

“Thank you Viceroy.” she says demurely.

 

“Padmé-!” he hisses so surprised he uses her real name. “Where's Cassian?”

 

“Elsewhere.” she murmurs, taking the proffered hydration pack from him.

 

He grabs her arm and pulls her close. “What are you doing?!” he hisses.

 

“You will not see me for a while.” she tells Bail demurely. “I have a personal matter to attend to.”

 

“What-? You're defecting?!”

 

Padmé scowls. “No. Ben's ward is having...issues.”

 

Bail raises his eyebrows. “Ah.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Will you be gone long?” he whispers.

 

She shrugs trying to shake his grip. “Tell your daughter I pray for her-” she murmurs

 

“Oh!” he let's go of her hand and she slips away.

 

She wishes she could have seen Leia, but it is too dangerous. They are both too conspicuous, especially here.

 

 

 

She does not go to the designated rendez-vous point to reconnect with Cassian, instead she walks to the other end of the refugee camp where Artoo has landed her yacht in the confusion of illegal refugee transport ships.

 

She walks up the ramp, back straight, chin up.

 

“Are we to get underway immediately Mistress?” Threepio asks.

 

She smiles at him. “Yes. That sounds exactly right. Have Artoo set a course for Tatooine.” she hears the little droid squeal in excitement and they lift off. Her heart feels light for the first time in a very long time. The rebellion will survive without her for a while. She's going to see Luke. It's been too long.

 

Their organization is finally gaining momentum and Rebel command has kept her busy drawing Imperial forces away from important operations, and running diplomatic missions, but, Luke has grown up in the meanwhile. She wonders if he'll have started to grow tall like Anakin or whether he'll stay short like her. She wonders if he's built more models of his favourite starships.

 

She wants to know everything.

 

 

 

 

The trouble starts just after they clear atmo. They aren't using the same documents to leave as to enter and the automatic system must have flagged her ship the minute she took off. Once that was done all it took was an Imperial agent of moderate intelligence to glance at the alert, recognize her yacht, and notify the Admiralty of her presence.

 

It's bad luck pure and simple. She curses the Force as she pilots manually, trying to dodge laser fire and lose the Imperial pursuit while R2 frantically inputs the coordinates for the jump to hyperspace.

 

They jump and it's a gamble. They're practically mid-rim on Lothal and it's likely the Imps will have made a few educated guesses as to her destination. Every station in the Quadrant will be on high alert for her, but Tatooine will be the last place anyone will expect a Rebel leader to flee to. It's out of the way, strategically irrelevant, was never part of the old Republic and therefore has never had even a single instance of Rebel activity.

 

Best of all, the Empire treads lightly on Hutt Controlled worlds, and even if they track her there Padmé can get lost in the steady stream of criminals and fugitives that always crowd Tatooine's space ports.

 

Then she'll go see Luke.

 

It's a desperate plan, but it has to work. She has no Rebel back-up. Bail probably doesn't even know she's in trouble and if he does there's nothing he can do, under surveillance as he is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They drop out of hyperspace suddenly with a scream of distress metal and the smell of burning wiring. Artoo shrieks. The ship is damaged. One of the Imps must have got in a lucky shot before they made the jump.

 

She puts Threepio on the coms trying to raise the nearest Rebel cell, or even someone with Rebel sympathies whose open to bribery, and spends the better part of three hours scrambling through the innards of her ship with Artoo and a hydrospanner trying to fix the hyperdrive and get the ship moving again.

 

It's no use. Nabooan yachts are impeccable, but difficult to repair in an emergency. They parts they require are specific and cannot be substituted.

 

Her ship is dead in the void of space and the Imps will find them long before help does.

 

Death has been Padmé's shadow for years. In some ways, she knows she's been living on borrowed time since the Republic fells and Anakin with it.

 

It doesn't make it easier now to go through the motions of protecting a movement she will never live to see succeed.

 

But, she promised Bail all those years ago that she'd play her part, and she's always been a woman of her word.

 

Threepio panics and toddles around insisting that these measures are unnecessary and proposing wildly implausible scenarios that would allow her to escape unharmed.

 

Artoo is grim. He follows her closely and dutifully wipes each of the drives completely, duplicating anything important onto his own internal servers.

 

There isn't actually much that would be of any use to the Empire. Padmé runs diplomatic missions trying to secure funds and convince potential allies to join the cause but her primary role is still that of figurehead and decoy.

 

She is not trusted with sensitive information.

 

It doesn't take long to wipe the servers. She walks back to her private room as a blast rocks the ship. Artoo and Threepio follow her. An Imperial patrol has found them.

 

“Thank you for your loyal service.” She tells them. “It has meant the world to me to be among friends...” She touches Artoo's dome. “...and you are really the oldest friends I have.”

 

She sits in her chair, and opens the drawer that holds her makeup.

 

“If you take the escape pod you will be welcomed back to the Rebellion. If you turn off the life support systems you'll have enough power to make it back to the nearest Rebel base.”

 

“No, Mistress Padmé!!” Threepio protests. “I will not abandon you! I refuse!!!”

 

Padmé closes her eyes. Another blaster hit rocks the ship. Artoo whistles sadly.

 

“Coincide your release of the pods with a hit to the ship and they won't even investigate. You won't show up on their scanners.” she continues.

 

“I understand you're quite upset but, I've had quite enough of this sort of talk-” Threepio protests.

 

Artoo burbles consolingly and Padmé opens her eyes. “You saved my life, the pair of you, all those years ago. Obi-Wan and Anakin were too busy fighting to care, but you got me inside the ship. I never knew how you did it, but you did. You saved me. You saved Luke and Leia too. I never forgot it.”

 

“It was an honour to serve you! No one else would have done anything less-”

 

Artoo zaps his friend and shorts out his legs. He deploys his grappling hook and drags the protesting protocol droid away.

 

“Thank you, Artoo.” Padmé murmurs. “Lock the blast door on your way out.”

 

 

 

 

In the old days they used to say those door were tough enough to even slow down Jedi a Now, they say with utmost confidence that it will take anyone at least an hour to break through.

 

The ship rocks again under another hit. She hopes that Artoo and Threepio have escaped.

 

She glances at herself in the mirror. She is still beautiful, but she's far from the fresh faced young senator who'd agitated against the Chancellor in the final days of the Clone Wars.

 

She's pale from too much time in space, and the years have etched deep lines of fear and stress and sadness around her mouth, and eyes.

 

Her hair and clothing is simple to better pass unnoticed.

 

She sighs and brings up the brush covered in white paint.

 

She pulls a small data drive out of her sleeve and places it next to the mirror. Luke appears, a toddler unsteady on his legs but single-minded in pursuit of his destination, shepherded by Beru who keeps ducking her head and looking at the camera.

 

Leia appears a moment later. It's a recent clip Padmé recorded from the holo-net from one of her humanitarian missions. The clips cycle through. A jumble of out of order moments. Children, and then babies and then almost adults.

 

They are smiling in each and every one. It is the only record of them anywhere. The only thing that connects them and her except memories.

 

She watches it out of the corner of her eye as she applies her makeup. It doesn't take long to do her make-up. She wears it so often, she could probably put it on blindfolded. Once her face is on she picks it up and turns it off.

 

She walks to her closet, and pulls out her most elaborate robe, fifteen years out of fashion. She drops the drive, picks up a shoe and smashes it to pieces. She rips a small hole a pocket of the robe and then carefully sweeps the pieces into her hand before pouring them into it. The pieces fall down between the lining and the outer layer of the dress. Hopefully, even if they search her closet they won`t bother looking too closely at something she so obviously hasn't worn in years.

 

The Imperials will have boarded by now. Artoo will have locked every set of doors he could on his way out. Maybe that will slow them down.

 

She puts on her best dress. The newest one that she most often wears when she's playing at still being Queen Amidala, the woman who fought to stop wars, rather than tried to start them.

 

There is a loud bang as the Imperials reach the blast doors and try to open them.

 

She walks back to her chair, clears off her desk, and arranges her skirt.

 

She is ready for them. There is a knife up each sleeve. A blaster strapped to her thigh that she can reach through a hole in the pocket of her skirt. Another is strapped to her ankle.

 

They are only token gestures of resistance though. The true safety is in the capsule of poison she has stuck to her back molar. It will kill her almost instantly.

 

Against her will her eyes fill with tears. Leia will hear of her death from Bail, when the news reaches the Rebellion. But there is no one to tell Luke what has happened to her. She hopes Beru hasn't told him that she's coming for a visit. She hates to think of him waiting for her, scanning the skies for the familiar silhouette of her yacht.

 

She tilts her head up and blinks. She doesn't have time to reapply the make-up, and she can't afford to look weak in front of whoever the Empire sends.

 

A spot of molten metal appears on the door and makes her frown. It almost looks like someone out there has a lightsaber...

 

With a shriek of distressed metal the door floats inward off it's hinges and then collapses. Padmé's heart freezes in her chest.

 

She has been prepared to die and the hands of the Empire for years. But this? This she is **not** prepared for.

 

Vader is standing in the doorway. Lightsaber ignited hand outstretched. Padmè had been ready to reach for her gun, but in her shock she freezes. Open-mouthed and unable to breathe because-

 

Anakin is here. Anakin has come for her.

 

Against all logic, and experience her chest fills with hope.

 

_Everything will be alright now!! Anakin has come to save me! Just like he had a dozen times before._

 

The she hears the rasp of Vader's infamous respirator and he advances towards her, and the past dies.

 

He has come to bury her, not to save her.

But, still. There's a part of her that is glad she'll see him again.

 

Even now, when they've lived far longer apart than they ever did together, there is a part of her that wants to try and reason with him. That wants to try and get an explanation. Part of her feels she should run to him, even now, knowing everything she does. He's Anakin, and in any other life she would never have ever turned away from him.

 

The moment passes and Padmé draws the blaster from her hit and fires off a few shots at the stormtroopers flanking Vader.

 

With a shocking economy of movement Anakin reaches out and flicks them aside with his lightsaber. They ricochet back into her room leaving craters and scorch marks in their wake.

 

“Amidala.” the deep voice intones.

 

_Vader's voice, not Anakin's. His voice had never been so deep, or so steady._

 

“You are under arrest. Do not resist.”

 

She flings her blaster down dramatically and stands. When the Stormtroopers move closer to flank her she pivots on the ball of her foot and brings her arms around to try and stab them in the neck with her concealed knives. She gets one of them pretty good before the other pins her arms to her sides and lifts her off her feet.

 

Vader seems exasperated. “In the interest of saving time search her now.”

 

They find her other blaster, and her other knife. Not the poison though. They carry her off her ship kicking and clawing, and ferry her aboard Vader's Star Destroyer. Once she's on board she allows herself to be escorted with as much dignity as she can muster. If there are sympathizers on board she doesn't want them to see the supposed leader of the Rebellion being carried like a Rebellious child.

 

They dump her in a cell with two chairs and a table.

 

The Stor-troopers leave. Vader stays.

 

She stares at her husband and runs her tongue along the poison capsule. She should bite down on it now, remove the risk she poses to the Rebellion and her children.

 

Who knew what Vader was capable of? She might not be able to resist telling him everything.

 

But, she doesn't bite down.

 

What can she say? She's always been someone who takes terrible risks.

 

“Anakin.” she says, breathless.

 

“Padmé” he replies, and despite the mechanized breathing and the vocoder, there's a reverence to it.

 

She sits, puts her head on her hand and stares at him. What's left of him. Obi-Wan had told her he was dead, and then admitted he'd only left him to burn.

 

But, it's Anakin, she knows it. She's known it for years.

 

There's a part of her that wants to demand an explanation. Wants to hash out the heartbreak and hold him responsible for everything she's lost and everything she never even got to have.

 

But, there are rumours about Vader being able to look into the minds of his victims. It wasn't a trick Anakin knew but, it's been twelve years since she and Anakin had been anything more than fugitive and pursuer.

 

But, it's Anakin. And she will always love him. She will love that boy who smiled at her in the meadow on Naboo until she dies, and she doesn't know if she has the strength to let him suffer.

 

Even if he deserves it.

 

He murdered the Jedi. He destroyed Obi-Wan. He supports the Empire that has enslaved and destroyed entire worlds across the galaxy. It is his fault that she never saw her family again after the first Empire day. It is his fault that she did not get to see her children grow up.

 

Perhaps he had been lied to or tricked. Perhaps he had come to his senses. Perhaps.

 

But, it's been twelve years and he never turned against the Empire, like he'd once so confidently planned. It's been twelve years and no one in the Rebellion has ever even hear a rumour of Vader being disloyal or unreliable, let alone sympathetic to the plight of people crushed under the Empire's heel.

 

It's been a very long twelve years.

 

What explanation can he give even if he was inclined to give one? Nothing he could ever say would justify what he's done.

 

Maybe in another life, where she has less to lose and more to gain, she would listen to whatever he has brought her here to tell her. 

 

But, Luke and Leia are not hers to gamble with. They belong to Bail, Breha, Kitster, Owen and Beru as much as they belong to her.

 

So, there's only one thing to say.

 

“Take off your mask. I want to see you.”

 

“I need my mask to help me breathe.”

 

“Hold your breath- just for a minute?”

 

To her surprise he reaches up and unclips it. Maybe, just like her, he can't actually turn his back on how much he loved her when they were both young. Maybe, just like her, he misses the person he used to be.

 

Maybe he has regrets, and wishes they'd gone away together.

 

She wants to know, but life is full of disappointments.

 

His face is a wreck. Scarred and pale and yellow eyed. But, she can still see him under there. It's her Anakin, just as much as it's Darth Vader. He always was.

 

She stands, leans across the table and kisses him on the cheek.

 

She smiles at him soft and sweet as summer in the Lake Country of Naboo. “I'm glad I got to see you again, my love.”

 

And she is glad. As much as she tried, she never really stopped loving him, but that doesn't mean she understands or forgives. It doesn't mean she thinks she owes him any sort of mercy.

 

She bites down on her capsule of hidden poison, and smiles at him as she falls. This smile isn't one he's seen before. It's not an expression the gentle young woman he'd known would have been capable of. It's as cruel and vicious as Tatooine's twin suns. It's the smile of a woman who has lived on lies, and threats, and hard bargains for more than a decade.

A woman who lost everything but her will to fight, and who has now, finally, won something back, even if it is only this small vengeance.

 

 

 

_Amidala had been a queen. In the view of many she was THE queen. The one the rest all had to measure up against. The one that would be remember in a thousand songs, and holomovies, and poems from now until the waters of Naboo ran dry._

 

_She had been young and brave and beautiful, and she had died. Across the galaxy in dark corners, and hidden rooms sentient beings raised glasses in her name, as the news trickled out that the leader and founder of the Rebellion had been captured by none other than Vader himself. They praise her bravery and her ideals, and mourn that she is gone too soon.  On Alderaan, Princess Leia Organa drains wipes away her tears and vows never to forgive and never to forget. She promises the spirit of the woman she'd called her aunt that she will take up the torch of freedom, and she will do her best to win the war that Padmé had died fighting._

__

_(In some jaded corners people mutter in discontent and point to the role she played in the Emperor's ascension, it was on her no-confidence vote that Palpatine was elected Chancelor, it was her representative Jar-Jar Binks who proposed granting the Chancellor emergency powers, her near-execution on Geonosis that had sparked the beginning of the clone wars...had she really been duped? Or had she been complicit in his schemes?)_

_(Others murmur at her death, as though her death itself  had been a betrayal rather that her inevitable end. After all, a legend like her couldn't just die like that! Legends are immortal and hers grows with each retelling)_

_The news eventually even reaches remote Tatooine, but the boy swinging his legs on a stool at a Mos Espa juice stand, and constantly craning his neck to watches the spaceships come and go doesn't pay too much attention to it. Luke Skywalker knows about the Rebellion, of course, but the death of one more brave hero doesn't seem too important right this second. He's waiting for a trader named Ami Korro, Beru promised she'd come to see him soon, and he has a few important questions to ask her._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue with Luke and Leia. I hope you guys liked it! Let me know!!


	5. Epilogue: Nineteen and Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia completes a mission for the Rebellion. Luke frees slaves. They both work in the memory of the mother they lost.

Leia is nineteen the first time she visits Tatooine. She's here to recruit, as strange as that seems on a planet like this one.

 

The heat hits Leia like a punch to the face as she steps off the Tantive. Tatooine is hotter and dryer than she could have ever possibly imagined.

The resistance has only a few contacts on the planet, all of them tenuous and none of them reliable. Things being as they are there's not much choice. The Rebellion may have destroyed the Death Star but all that's done is bring the full force of the Imperial war maching down on them.

 

Getting the plans and Gaelen Erso had been a miracle. But, the rebellion can't run on hope alone and destroying the Death Star will mean the Rebellion steps forward to openly defy the Empire, and they can't rely on miracles once that happens.  They need experience, or they need to cheat. According to most, the Force has always favoured Obi-Wan Kenobi, so Bail considers this recruiting him to be a combination of the two.

 

Leia hadn't considered that finding Obi-Wan Kenobi once she got to Tatooine might be easier said than done. Her father didn't have any exact coordinates. Most places the Rebels have no problem finding who their looking for, and even if it is a little difficult there are contacts who know people who know people, and eventually you'll find who you're looking for.

 

Tattoine isn't like that. There are two distinct cultures here, and the two don't mix easy. There's the natives and there's the people passing through. The towns are almost entirely made up of people passing through- boutny hunters, criminals, long-hail space freighters, and the prostitutes, merchants, and drug dealers who catered to them. People came and went and most folks didn't ask questions. With the exception of a few of the Hutts employees most of the people in the towns hadn't ever left them. They washed up on Tatooine, stayed for a day, a week, a month or a decade and then allowed themselves to drift to the next spaceport on the next lawless planet.

 

Obi-Wan was not in the town. He was not known to the Hutts, or to the spacers that frequented the bars or the Rebel informants who whispered with one eye open for the Imperial Stormtroopers.

 

Leia knew where he was, generally. He lived out in the Jundland wastes on the edge of the Dune Sea. Except, the Jundland wastes were large, Obi-Wan wasn't expecting her, and 20 years on or not, he'd been a one man army during the Clone Wars.

 

If he was less paranoid than most veterans of the Clone wars he'd elude detection. If he were on par with the majority of Clone War survivors that Leia had actually met he'd shoot down her ship and leave her to the mercy of the desert.

 

And the desert of Tatooine, Leia was more and more learning, was not something you should leave out of your planning. Unfortunately, the majority of people who actually lived in the desert were incredibly wary of outsiders, and unlike natives on most colonized worlds, were not immediately positively disposed towards the Rebels.

 

Most people she talks to give her strange looks when she says she needs to go into the desert. She gets tired of the repetition. No she's not looking to sell. No she's not crazy. Yes, she has a ship, but no she doesn't have coordinates for a location so it's not much good now is it?

In the end it's one of the few legitimate Rebel operatives on planet who finally gives her the lead.

 

Chewbacca is not well suited for this climate, but he's a staunch Rebel supporter and his co-pilot has been in Jabba's good graces for the better part of a decade. It's the best intel on Tatooine she's likely to get, without having to deal directly with the Hutts or trying to make a native talk.

 

Leia is just sitting down with Chewbacca and trying to muddle through without C-3p0, since for some reason droids aren't allowed in the bar when a tall human interrupts them by sprawling down next to Chewbacca in the booth and gives her a once over.

 

He grins at her. “ I'm Captain Han Solo, of the Millenium Falcon, fastest ship in the galaxy. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

 

She smiles despite herself. She likes his confidence and the way he wears those Corellian boots. In fact, he is not the man she's looking for, but she's heard of him. Han Solo has quite a dossier in Rebel intelligence. Former Imperial with strong Rebel leanings, currently affiliated with the Hutt syndicate, best ship in the galaxy, loose morals and thrill seeking habits that may be just the simple risks of a life of crime but could be a dangerous sign of a gambling problem.

 

“You lost princess?” he asks. “Or are you looking to hire a freighter? Maybe got some goods you need to move that you don't want daddy to find out about?”

 

She glares at him. “I was talking to your co-pilot. I'm only in the market for information. I'm looking for someone.”

 

“Well, ain't that a coincidence, darling. I'm looking for someone too.” He leans closer to her and winks. “Are you who I'm looking for?”

 

Leia scowls at him. “Are you interested in my money or in me?”

 

Han laughs and leans back. “Either, both. It's not mutually exclusice sweetheart.”

 

The wookie moans and growls at his partner who looks thoughtful as he listens.

 

He barks out a laugh. “The Jundland wastes?! Good luck with that. I bet you haven't found anybody willing to tell you a damn thing.”

 

Leia presses her lips together. He's right. She's tried the haunts the locals frequent and been met with a glaring wall of silence.

 

He grins. “Yeah, that's deep desert. They don't care for outsiders, and the moisture farmers closed ranks a few years back after the Hutts started giving 'em trouble.”

 

“Couldn't you take me out there?” she asks. “You seem to know your way around the planet.”

 

Han snorts and leans back. “Not worth the fuel, if you don't have coordinates I'm afraid. I can't just be flying around aimlessly in atmo.” He looks at Chewbacca. “What do you think Chewie? Got any ideas for her ladyship?”

 

Chewie roars. Han solo raises an eyebrow. “You really recommmended that? One or the other of 'em'll end up dead!”

 

Chewie grumbles. Han looks thoughtdful. “True, the kid could end up rich. And I'd love to see the trouble he could cause then..”

 

He cranes his neck and hollers over his shoulder. “Hey, slave boy!! This lady wants to hire you as a local guide!!!”

 

A blonde boy sitting at the bar turns, and shouts “Don't be an ass, Han! Even though I know you mostly can't help it!!” He's about her age, shorter than the Corellian and obviously as local as you can get without being a Jawa or a Tusken. He has hair scorched yellow, and skin burned brown, and a scar on his cheek that looks like someone branded him with Huttese syllabics.

 

He glares at her as he sizes her up with such naked disdain that Leia is quite taken aback.

 

Han catches her reaction and laughs. “It's Tatooine, your worship. They're suspicious out here. Plus the suns give most of them a perma-squint.”

 

“I do not have a perma-squint” the newcomer grumbles as he slides into the booth. That's certainly true. His eyes are remarkably large, and bluer than the washed out sky, set in a kind honest face. It's the sort of face the Intelligence division would kill to get their hands on. You can' teach someone to look that guileless- they need to be born that way.

 

Han makes the introductions. “This is Luke, he's a local, and runs the only reputable on-world shipping operation going. He knows everyone, and everyone knows him. For a fee, I'm sure he can find whoever you're looking for. Luke, this is Leia- she's looking for a reliable local.”

 

“I'm looking for a human named Obi-Wan Kenobi. He used to live around these parts. Heard of him?” Leia asks.

 

The wookie howls and the Corellian nearly spits his drink out through his nose. “Yeah, and Yoda has a summer home here. I don't know where you're getting your information sweetheart-”

 

“My information is right!” she snaps. “His last known location was in hiding in the deserts of Tatooine.”

 

The kid eyes her. “I might know someone who could find him.” He stares at her expectantly.

 

She sighs, and gets out her bribe money. She doesn't know what she was expecting from a planet that's still mostly Hutt controlled.

 

He taps the credit chips against the bar once she's counted out enough and smiles. “There's a Ben Kenobi who lives alone in the Jundland wastes and trades with the moisture farmers. Keeps to himself, won't trade with Jabbas or smugglers, been known to cause a bit of trouble. Folks say he's a wizard.”

 

Leia blinks. That sounds more than promising.

 

“Alright, I'll pay you for the coordinates.”

 

Luke hesitates and bites his lip.

 

“Look, I'll take your money, but, no one flies out to the desert, certainly not in the sort of ship a lady like you would have...and given that you're talking to Han here, I can only assume you want to avoid...Imperial entanglements. If you head out that way in you ship the Hutts and the Imps will take notice. Maybe tail you just on principle to see what you're up to. Not to mention, Kenobi doesn't know you and might not be...” he hesitates “...the most welcoming host.”

 

Leia had considered that, but the fact of that matter is she's running out of options.

 

“Well, you're the local guide. What do you suggest?”

 

Luke hesitates. “I could run you out myself. I know the route. I'd even delay my usual deliveries and take you today, if you're willing to pay premium. There's room on the speeder. You could ride with me for a few thousand credits. Maybe a tip if you find what you're looking for.” He glances over her shoulder at her guards hovering by the door. “Only room for one though.”

 

Leia doesn't hesitate or glance at her guards. She puts her hand out. “It's a deal, we'll go as soon as possible though.” He smiles at her, and it changes his whole face. “Good.”

 

They shake on it.

 

 

 

He leads her out of the cantina and down a side-street and dead ends near a pile of garbage. He rolls a pile of machinery to the side to reveal a trap door.

 

He glares at her. “Breathe a word and I'll put a bounty on you.”

 

She nods and follows him down into a dark cool tunnel. For a moment she worries he's going to murder her, steal her belongings and leaver her down there.

 

Then the whoosh of a lit flame illuminates the stone tunnel in shade of orange. A man with dark hair peers at them in the flickering light. “Luke!” he hisses. “You're too early- has something gone wrong!? Who's this?”

 

Luke smiles. “Don't worry, Uncle Kitster. It's fine. She's a customer, wants to avoid Imperial problems. I'm taking her on a round trip to the Jundland wastes. I'll be back for the regular run.”

 

Kitsters frowns. “What's she want out there?”

 

Luke glances at Leia and shrugs. “I don't ask questions. I just get paid.”

 

Kitster rolls his eyes. “And you brought her down here. Wonderful.”

 

Luke barks out a laugh. “She's an Outlander, Kitster. She couldn't care less. She'll be off-world by the end of the week and never give Tatooine another thought.”

 

Reluctantly, Kitster steps back to let them pass. “I hope you know what you're doing!” he calls after Luke.

 

“Don't I always?” Luke yells over his shoulder.

 

Leia looks quizically at Luke as they continue to wander down the tunnels.

 

They pass a groups of ragged looking children, mostly humans but a couple twilecks and a rodian too, that sit playing cards around a lantern.  “Hello, trouble!” The kids call grinning and waving at them as they walk by. 

 

Luke waves back and calls each of them by name. 

 

Leia stares at him. “Where are we?”

 

He laughs. “Old access tunnels for the pod-races. They stopped twenty years ago and now everyone's forgotten they're here.”

 

“Except you.”

 

Luke smiles brightly. “Well, my father was a pod-racer. I'm not likely to forget! This way the Imperials and the Hutts never know who comes and goes.” He jerks his head. “C'mon, I'll take you to my ship.”

 

“And who are all those people in the tunnels?”

 

Luke scowls at her. “I don't ask you questions.” Luke says opening a door that let's in a blast of blinding light and scorching air into the tunnel.

 

He steps out into an empty arena half buried in sand and pulls a cover off a mid-sized speeder. “Hop in.”

 

He pulls out a rough dun coloured poncho and hands it to her glancing at her white diplomatic dress. “It won't do too much, but it's better than nothing.” He tosses her a pair of goggles and then climbs in.

 

Leia is still thinking about the gaunt weather worn faces in the tunnels.

 

“Are they slaves?” she asks. “Or...former slaves...like you?” she asks once Luke has gunned the engine and they're far enough out of Mos Espa that it's disappeared in the haze on the horizon.

 

Luke scowls. “I'm not actually a slave.” he informs her. “Han just likes to be an asshole.”

 

She smiles. “I am not surprised to learn Han is an asshole.” she gestures to the scar. “What's with the brand then?”

 

He grins “That's how you know I'm not a slave. Kid my age? The Hutts would never damage the merchandise by branding on the face Lowers the resale value too much. No Zygerrian slaver worth a damn would take one that's already branded.”

 

“So how'd you get it-?” she asks eagerly.

 

“See, my godfather Kitster used to be a slave. You met him in the tunnels. My dad too, obviously, since he was a podracer. Anyway, the Hutts have been having real trouble with their slaves recently. They keep getting weapons or disappearing or...all sorts of things.” He looks at her with a blank innocent expression of complete guilelessness “Now by complete coincidence I happened to make deliveries around the same time as these unfortunate events.”

 

Leia laughs. “Of course, a complete coincidence” she replies with equal mock seriousness.

 

Luke grins at her and winks. “So, Jabba decides given this circumstantial evidence and my family connection to a known slave agitator, I must have been the ones instigating all this trouble..so” he gestures to the mark on his face. “They decided to make a point.”

 

“I'm surprised you're still alive.-” Leia say, genuinely in awe of the boy's bravery and recklessness. The Hutts aren't to be taken lightly.

 

“Well- On this planet there's one thing even Jabba needs, and that's water.” tells her staring out at the horizon. He looks at her brightly. “Guess who my people are?”

 

“Who are they?”

 

“Moisture farmer.s.” he declares smugly. “Jabba does love his sponge baths, and the Imperials are squeezing him hard enough that not even he can afford to have all his water imported. And moisture farms are built like fortresses to ward off the sand people, so, when Jabba was fixing to feed me to his Rancor my uncle got all the moisture farmers to stop selling to the Hutts...made a whole big fuss about it.  I got let off with a warning, and a promise not to be caught anywhere near any of Jabba's slaves or else I'd get dumped in the Sarlacc pit next time.”

 

Leia rolls her eyes, “A promise I see you kept.”

 

“Of course!” Luke chirps. “After all, I just promised I wouldn't get _caught_.”

 

Leia chuckles and then sighs as she looks at the cramped overloaded speeder. “How well do you know Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

 

Luke pauses. “Oh, well enough. Old Ben used to look after me when I was little. He used to be a good friend of my parents.”

 

Leia hops into the speeder. “Obi-Wan Kenobi knew a slave-podracer?”

 

Luke shrugs. “Well...yeah?.”

 

Leia laughs, and puts her hand out. “Luke it was some kind of luck meeting you.”

 

Luke shakes it and laughs. “Same here, Your Highness. Same here.”

 

 

 

 

The drive in silence until the suns begin to sink and up a series of low domes set into the sand appears on the horizon.

 

“We'll stop here for the night.” Luke tells her. 

 

Luke flies his speeder down into a covered pit, then flips a switch and doors close about him. He hands her a water skin, which she downs thankfully.

 

Leia follows him past rows of hydroponic crops set under lamps, the air is damp for the first time since she stepped off the Tantive IV.

 

Luke opens the door to what is obviously the living quarters. “Aunt Beru?!” he calls. “It's me! I brought your supplies from town.”

 

“Luke?” A woman with grey hair and a sun weathered face comes around the counter and throws her arms around him. She looks at Leia. “Who's this?”

 

Luke shrugs. “Customer. Name of Leia. I'm taking her out to the wastes. She wants to see Old Ben.”

 

Beru glances sharply at Luke. “Ben? What does she want with him?”

 

Luke shrugs. “I don't ask questions about that sort of thing, you know that.”

 

Beru smiles fondly and pats his cheek. “I know. You'r Uncle will be back for dinner.”

 

Luke rolls his eyes. “he won't be happy I brought an Outlander.”

 

Beru laughs, and then turn to Leia. “Come along dear, come sit. You must be worn out, between the heat and the way Luke flies.”

 

Luke scoffs. “I'm the best pilot on this dustball!” he protests.

 

The dinner is surreal. When Luke's uncle arrives he's an equally weathered old man, with an open disdain and suspicion of her. She learns that Luke is one of the only young people still working in the desert, the rest have gone off to the Imperial academies, ended up working for the Hutts, or have disappeared to join the rebellion.

 

“That reminds me.” Owen grumbles. “Darklighter came by. They got a transmission a few days ago.” he glances gently at Luke. “Biggs is dead.”

 

Luke stares blankly at his plate. “It's not like we didn't know it, already.”

 

Owen shrugs. “Still, it's hard news. He was a promising boy. It's a real waste.”

 

Beru puts her hand over Luke's but he shakes it off and glares at Leia. “Yeah, a terrible waste.”

 

Beru looks at Leia. “Biggs deserted from the Imperial Academy and joined the Rebels.” She closes her eyes and winces as Luke and Owen both spit. “He stopped sending transmissions a while ago, and well...we've been assuming the worst for a while.”

 

Luke shakes his head, and bangs his fist on the table. “The idiot!” he glares at Leia. “We needed him here. He could have made a big difference.” He leans back and stares at the ceiling. “He was a good pilot. I could have used him.”

 

He picks up his fork and stabs his food before pushing his plate away in disgust. “I'm sorry Beru. I've lost my appetite. I'll finish this later.” He stands and carefully returns the portion from his plate to the serving dish.

 

Beru nods. She forces a smile at Leia. “You'll have to excuse him. For all he rants and raves he was very close with Biggs. They used to talk about going to the Academy together.”

 

Leia swallows the bile of sitting with Imperial sympathizers. “Is he still hoping to join up?”

 

Owen barks out a laugh. “Luke? Join the Academy?”

 

Beru chuckles. “Luke follows his own path, and Suns help you if you try to turn him from it. He only listens to his Uncle Kitster and even then only about half the time.”

 

Owen is still chuckling into his plate. Leia finishes her meal quickly and then heads off in search of Luke.

 

She finds him perched outside on one of the domes, watching the suns set.

 

“I'm sorry about your friend. But, you should respect his choice. He died for a cause he believed in.”

 

“He died for nothing. The Rebellion has plenty of soldiers. Idiots who'll die for an idea.  One falls some other fool will take his place.” He grits his teeth and screws his eyes shut. “Suns damn him! He didn't make a damn bit of difference out there, but here? Here he would have made all the difference.”

 

As the suns set the blue light of twilight makes the scar on his cheek stand out against the dark of his skin.

 

Leia eyes him. “Doing what?”

 

Luke glares. “Making Tatooine someplace half-way decent.” He touches his cheek. “Freeing slaves.” He shrugs. “Kicking the Hutts in the teeth.” He glares at Leia. “Instead he died on the trench run for the Death Star, for nothing.”

 

“For Alderaan!” Leia protests.

 

Luke looks at her in blank confusion. “For what?”

 

“They blew up the Death Star before it could destroy the planet Alderaan. _My_ planet.”

 

Luke doesn't meet her eyes. “Did he save Alderaan personally? Or was he just canon fodder?”

 

Leia can't answer that. She doesn't know. They lost the rancor's share of Rebel pilots in that encounter.

 

“Does it matter? Alderaan was saved. The Death Star was destroyed. He was part of that.”

 

Luke stands and hops down off the dome. “He kept trying to get me to join. He was always sending me messages, telling me the Rebellion could use someone like me.”

 

“I'm sure we could.”

 

Luke grins crookedly as he looks up at her. “But, then who would free the slaves?”

 

Leia looks at him. “If we defeat the Empire, the rebellion will help Tatooine.”

 

Luke shakes his head, and laughs. “That'll be a first. No one else ever has.”

 

He heads down towards the door. “C'mon princess, it's not safe after dark. The Sand people don't often come out this far, but when they do they'll kill whoever crosses their path.”

 

Leia hops down and follows him. Luke hesitates by the door, and the looks over his shoulder. “You know, I do understand a bit what you're trying to do. It's just that when you decide big ideas matter more than anything else, ordinary people tend to start looking small. My mother was a rebel, you know.”

 

“Really? What was her name?”

 

“You wouldn't know her, she wasn't fine enough to be brushing shoulders with princesses.”

 

“Try me.”

 

“Her name was Ami Korro. She was just a freighter pilot. Ran exotic goods between the Empire, the Outer Rims and sometimes Zygerria, and did stuff for the Rebels whenever she could. It's why I live with my aunt and uncle. The Rebellion was more important, and then one day she just never came back, and no one knew what happened.”

 

Leia swallows and remembers Queen Amidala's gentle voice and surprisingly calloused hands. “My biological mother died when I was twelve, she killed herself after being captured by the Empire. She was a Rebel too. ”

 

Luke quirks one side of his mouth up. “I guess that's something we have in common.”

 

Leia nods. “I guess it is.”

 

Luke looks over her shoulder at the last fading rays of the sunset. “I'll drive you out to see Old Ben tomorrow, hopefully he'll go with you and that'll be that.”

 

“Alright.”

 

 

Luke holds out his elbow for her like some old fashioned gentleman from an out of date holo-video. Leia laughs and takes it with a curtsy. “Why thank you kind sir.”

 

Luke sets up a bed for her in an unused storage room. “Hey Luke,” she calls after him as he heads to his own room. He pauses at the door. “I promise that once we've defeated the Empire, the Rebels will come to Tatooine and help you free the slaves.”

 

Luke shakes his head and then turns to smile at her. It's the saddest thing Leia thinks she's ever seen. “Everyone always says they'll come back, but no one ever does.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so long and I don't know why, but here it is. Writing a cynical Luke was very strange, but I was trying to channel a bit of the Last Jedi Luke Skywalker combined with the whiny teenage one from New Hope. 
> 
> Tough, slave freeing Luke has been something I wanted to write for a while and I finally managed to sneak him in! I hope you all don't mind the open ended finale to this story, but I just didn't have a better way to end that interaction. 
> 
> Comments are always very appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> I spent way too much time on this. Anyway, I've read a few versions of the Padmé lives AU, and I wanted to do one based on some ideas I have about what makes her tick and who she is. Eventually this will be three parts though I don't have them all written yet.
> 
> Comments are always ALWAYS very appreciated.


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